Arlong Park Editors/Admin Tutorial
Over its lifetime, the new Arlongpark will have many editors. Many from the forum community will likely be invited to add and edit content, with access based on good behavior or longevity.
For now, the mods of the forum have an open invitation to become Admin's for the site, and the mods have an open invitation to be listed as Editors. Over time, mods will probably have their rights escalated, and a third intermediary group might be recreated.
User Permissions
Upon first visiting the site, everyone starts with the same permissions: viewing most of the content. Permissions can be escalated to various levels by a site Admin by adding the user's name to the EditorsGroup or the AdminGroup.
Here is the breakdown for user permissions:
- Anonymous users can view most pages
- Logged in users can view pages and set some personal viewing settings
Those in the EditorsGroup can add and edit page content, and view some special content related to viewing the site
Those in the AdminGroup can add and remove people from the EditorsGroup and the AdminGroup, and can additionally rename and delete entire pages
Creating a Login
To create a login, click on "Login" under the User menu to the left. This will take you to the UserPreferences page, which looks like this:
To create a login, enter information in each field. Arlongpark does not have an official privacy policy (yet), but your email will not be used for non-site purposes (ie. sending an update on your arlongpark account) or given to anyone else.
To login at a later time, click on "Login" under the User menu and then fill out the top two fields (Name and Password).
User Options
Upon logging in, you will be taking to a page that lists your UserPreferences; a page you can visit at anytime by clicking UserPreferences under the User menu. The UserPreferences page will look something like this:
A few notes about these preferences:
- They are only saved on logout
- Option 1 (Add spaces to displayed wiki names) seems to only work on navigation menus
Open editor on double click will only successfully open an editor for those in the EditorsGroup or above
Remember login information will set a cookie
Show icon toolbar will only work on those in the EditorsGroup or above
Show top/bottom links in headings displays large, black arrows in every page heading... it isn't very attractive, so be warned
Page Options
If you belong to the EditorsGroup or above, then upon logging in you will find that a few things have changed. The first is that you will now have an icon bar displayed on every page. This bar gives you quick access to various editing options that you might have on the page. FIXME: Change the icons for this, and add some images here detailing which is which.
You will also notice that your have a new menu in the navigation bar called Edit / Admin. This menu gives you much of the same features that the icon bar gives you, but won't be hidden from you if you decide in your UserPreferences to hide the icon bar. The menu looks like this:
Note: for those who are not Admin's, Rename Page and Delete Page will be disabled and appear grayed out.
Editing a page
If you belong to the EditorsGroup or above, you will have the ability to edit existing content. This means that, with each additional editor, more eyes can scan and fix simple errors in spelling or grammar. It also means that content you changed may itself be changed if it is considered inappropriate or inaccurate! Over time, each page should approach an ideal where there are no objections and very few simple errors.
Although builtin pages like the Login or UserPreferences page cannot be edited, most pages on Arlongpark are dynamic and are editable through the web interface. You have 3 quick options to edit any dynamic page on Arlongpark:
click on the edit icon in the icon toolbar (which, by default, appears as a small quote image)
click on Edit under the Edit / Admin menu.
if enabled in your UserPreferences, you can double click on the page
Doing any of these three brings you to a page that looks something like this:
As is explained in the yellow note, any other users attempting to edit the page will be warned that someone else is editing it for 10 minutes, and if you want to extend this time you can hit the preview button.
If you need help on the wiki markup used for formatting content, click Help On Formatting to get a quick overview. A more in depth list of formatting helps can be found at HelpOnEditing.
When you are done making your changes, it is highly recommended that you outline your reason for editing the page in the Optional comment about this change box, and make use of both the Check Spelling and the Preview buttons pictured below before saving the changes. Your comment can help when later looking for a change to revert to, or give other people insights as to why you changed what you did. The submission piece of the editing page looks like:
Creating a Page
If you belong to the EditorsGroup or above, then you will also have the ability to create new content. Be advised that if an Admin does not think the content belongs on Arlongpark, they may delete it at any time.
There are two ways to create a new page, although both essentially boil down to being the same.
- Type in the desired URL for the new page
- Click on a link for a page that has not been created yet
Creating a new page from Scratch
If you wanted to create a new page, and there did not exist any link to it in Arlongpark, the easiest way to do it is to simply type in the URL that you want to create. If you wanted to create "SomeNewPage", then typing "http://arlongpark.net/SomeNewPage" would allow you to do so. You would be greeted with a page like this:
Clicking on Create new empty page will bring you to a screen almost identical to the one described in Editing a page above.
Note: So far, we have not created any page templates. This will probably change, as much of the content in Arlongpark will lend itself to being displayed within a template.
Creating a new page from a link
Most of the time, information that doesn't exist will belong to an index somewhere, which itself will belong to another index or perhaps be directly linked from the navigation menu. Many times, pages that do not exist will be linked to by these indexes, and represent content that has not yet been created. If you choose to do so (and as an Editor or Admin it is highly recommended, as it increases the visibility of the weaknesses of the site), you may choose to view these non-existent links as question marks. This is evident in the current (as of this writing) condition of the Guides section:
Clicking on any of these question mark links will bring you to a page that allows you to create that missing page:
Clicking on the Create new empty page link will lead you to the same result as if you had created the page from scratch.